


Chrysostomus

by kira892



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, John and dave being bros, Post-SBurb AU, and also being idiots sitting out in the snow at 1am in the morning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You like pretending sometimes, just like Rose likes pretending that she doesn't also know that John has trouble sleeping and why, like Jade likes pretending that there isn't a gray asshole that's most likely just as lonely as all of you are, all the way across the other side of the universe, with his equally lonely friends</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chrysostomus

**Author's Note:**

> This is a christmas present for davestrider-theknightoftime and im kind of nervous about publishing it since i wrote this at 1 am in the morning when i had trouble sleeping >.

You wake up a little past midnight.  Or to be more specific, you wake up exactly an hour, 35 minutes and 17 seconds after 12 am. You know this even without  glancing at the neon green numbers on John's alarm clock but still, you pretend just to be generally aware that its sometime past midnight when you slide your way out of the sleeping bag on that you've set up to be your bed for the holidays and roll over onto the empty one next to yours.

"Rude." You murmur, wiggling around in the egbert-less space where an egbert should have been and was, just 2 hours, 1 minute and 38 seconds ago when the two of you decided to conk out for the night. John, although this was his room, decided on also using a sleeping bag and sleeping next to you on the floor even though his bed is right flipping there. But instead, the two of you built a ~~totally shitty~~ wicked awesome fort on it that only really ended up as non-functional masterpiece on his dumb ghostbuster sheets since his bed wasnt big enough for two grown men and a fort.

You stare at the ceiling for a few moments (2 minutes and 10 seconds) and determine that John must have gotten up just around midnight, like he tends to do sometimes, every couple of weeks to be precise. Except for that one time last month where he got up every night for 2 weeks. You pretend you don't know exactly when he got up, how long he spent awake when the rest of the world was asleep and how long it took him to text you, Rose or Jade.

You liked pretending sometimes, just like Rose likes pretending that she doesn't also know that John has trouble sleeping and why, like Jade likes pretending that there isn't a gray asshole that's most likely just as lonely as all of you are, all the way across the other side of the universe, with his equally lonely friends. You havent talked to her about it yet, and probably never will, because even when you do it on a regular basis without meaning to, you actually don't like making her sad. And you know that knowing exactly where Karkat is and knowing she can't reach him anymore would do that.

Sometimes, it's really better to just pretend.

You lie there for another minute or two, thinking and when the green numbers on the clock read 1:45, you get up, and quietly make your way downstairs. The kitchen light is on when you get there and you're unsurprised to find Rose awake, pouring steaming water  in a tall white mug. There was a design printed around the rim, made to look like a black lipstick mark. Rose hasn't worn black lipstick for years and you know that there's more to that dumb little mug than just being stylish but you don't ask. It's one of those heat-reveal mugs and you watch as the hot water fills it up and the black lips turn to green.

"What are you doing up?" You ask a little groggily,

"Asks the person who is also awake at 1 in the morning." Rose replies absently, dunking a tea spoon into the mug, and stirring. She's got her reading glasses on and the reflection of the christmas lights in the living room glint off of their lenses, blue red and green lights dancing in her eyes. Heh. Seer of Light.

As if she heard you thinking it, Rose looks up, you quickly look past her, to the door of the guest room she shared with Jade, wondering for a second if she was awake too. You only ever wear your shades in public these days but its time like these that makes you wish you still had the heart to wear them on your face all the time, even when Dirk isn't around to see you looking exactly like the brother that you are and are not at the same time. Rose draws your attention back to her when she raises a thin, manicured finger and points it at the front door.  "He's on the front porch." she says.

"Kay." You mutter and without another word, begin to make a beeline for the door.

Rose calls out to you when you're halfway through the living room and you look over your shoulder with raised eyebrows. She nods at the mantel, where Jane keeps a box of matches for the hearth along with a bunch of shitty bic lighters for the small assortment of scented candles on it. "Take a lighter."

You don't ask why, you just do as she says. There's a blanket and a hoodie (Jake's you think) draped over the back of the couch and you take those with you too. You don't bother with shoes even knowing you'll regret it and you step out into the icy december night in a borrowed hoodie, a blanket, your boxers and the pair of socks patterned with orange triangles that may or may not be doritos.

John is in fact on the porch. He sat with his back turned to you, looking like a vaguely blue, lumpy blob in a big, navy  parka and the wool beanie that Rose knitted for him last christmas. You hear the sharp metalic clinking of it before you spot his left hand twirling the familiar, worn, silver zippo you gave him for his 20th birthday and you shiver a little (a lot) when a gust of frozen air blows by. It carries the sharp, bitter smell of smoke with it and you cross the short distance it takes to reach him, standing there with your knees barely touching his back. You watch white smoke float up from his mouth for 3 seconds before asking.

"Is there supposed to be something poetic and deep about sitting out in the cold at ass o'clock in the morning to smoke?"

"Hi to you too." John says, turning his face upward and grinning up at you with his half burnt cigarette sticking out the side of his mouth. The zippo, which he was in the middle of twirling, snaps shut with a flick of his wrist  and you nudge john a little with your knee, urging him to move and make room for you. "Because im telling you now dude, its just lame and extremely dumb."

"Your face is dumb Dave." John says as you sit down next to him on the cold concrete porch step of the Crocker house.

"Ooh, ow, that was one sick burn. I think you just saved me from freezing my nuts off, thanks bro." you mutter flatly, wrapping the blanket tighter around yourself. John takes one last, long drag out of his cigarette and throws it out onto the snow. He exhales thin streams of smoke from his nose like the most pathetically pityful dragon before blowing the rest of the fumes in his lungs out through his cracked lips. It's a little hard to see with the dim light coming from the street lamp at the end of the driveway but you're pretty sure his nose and cheeks are pink. Like you, he's decided to ditch his eyewear and there are deep lines under his eyes.

You yawn, eyes squeezing down to slits and John produces another cigarette from the pocket of his parka. He tries to light it once, twice and before he can attempt a third time, you nudge his zippo away and light it for him with the lighter you took from the mantle.

John doesn't thank you or says anything, just leans sideways a little to touch his shoulder with yours. He likes pretending too, likes pretending that his smoking habit isnt a thing, not really. He likes to pretend that it didn't mean anything, that the small black pipe printed on the bottom right corner of his zippo was just a tiny insignificant detail like the black lips on Rose's mug.

He started the year you guys turned 18, two years, 22 hours and 10 minutes _after_. Jane wasn't happy about it. Her dad thought John was a little too young to be smoking maybe and was definitely disapproving of the kind of junk he was inhaling.  You think he might've offered John some of his shmancy tobacco and one of his spare pipes. Or maybe he did, you're not too sure, all you knew was that at some point, he and his daughter just dropped the whole concern thing and were skittish around John for an entire day.

You, Rose and Jade didn't really care. Jade did for a while, but after the incident that might have happened where Mr. Crocker unintentionally punched a sore spot in front of John and Jane, she stopped making her concern apparent.

 You ought to care because John is your best bro and smoking isnt exactly healthy but hey, not like you and Rose are ones to talk. Of course Rose hasnt touched alcohol save for holidays ever since she was 16 but still. As for you, well, you didn't abuse any substances but you still found a way to abuse yourself for a while after everything ended and you were all stuck in this painfully familiar universe where a lot of things were the same but everything is still different. Also, you ended up with Dirk so you _understand_. You understand why John smoked cancer sticks while Mr. Crocker smoked aromatic american tobacco (just like Mr. Egbert did), because they're as similar as your Bro and Dirk.

"Which one is this one?" You ask as John takes a drag.

"Fourth." He answers.

You grunt in response, tucking your hands into the blanket and shoving them into your sides. Your toes curl and uncurl in your socks and John throws an arm over your legs. The heel of his hand is warm when it settles on your thigh.

"Do you think dad would still be proud, ?" he trails off like he was thinking out loud and realized it halfway through, staring straight ahead at the empty street lined with dark houses. He sounds and looks very un-John like in the way you doubt he ever was around anyone but you, Rose and Jade.

"Yeah. Wasn't that 90% of your dad's personality? Being proud of you?"

John snorts. "This one still gives me looks of stern fatherly disapproval sometimes. a lot of the time. always."

You shrug. He's not your dad. You think but you don't say it. Besides, Dirk and Roxy are both stuck with you and Rose just as you and her are stuck with completely different, damaged physical copies of people you've lost. You think Mr. Crocker could handle being disappointed.

"Any word from Roxy or Dirk yet?" He asks, flicking open the zippo and playing with it. He's learned a whole arsenal of impressive tricks to do with it, and they're all that remains now of the stupid magic tricks John used to love doing when you were all young and a lot less jaded. You watch him snap it shut, flip it back open with a snap of his fingers, light it with another snap and pinch the flame gone with his fingers.

"Nope. I really don't think they'd make it for Christmas."

"Dirk said they would, he usually does things he says he would. He's kind of scary sometimes like that." John says, snapping his fingers one more time. The flame comes back on when he does, blows out .23 millaseconds later and refuses to come back. It's okay though, you got John 4 bottles of lighter fluid as part of his christmas present. You let him know as much, stirring the conversation away from the brother/dad thing you still only half know and who still barely knows you. You wonder if Rose has the same problem with Roxy even with all her knowledge, if she suffers the same disoriented sense of dysphoria that you and John do everytime you talk or see Mr. Crocker and Dirk, if she's also messed up about the fact that the strangers you're stuck with are technically the people you missed for 3 years.

You wonder if any of you will ever stop feeling like this, or when Jake and Jade would stop being worried that they could so easily pair up and become family when all the rest of you couldn't.

John rests his head on your shoulder. You try to move your arm and drape the blanket over you both, fail and frown loudly (yes, that is what you did because frowning loudly is totally a thing, a thing that you can do and John can't, or so you let him know when you tell him it is what you're doing and he just laughs and calls you a dweeb) when John snorts and pulls your head to rest on his shoulder instead. He drapes his legs over yours and wraps an arm around your shoulder. It's a little awkward because you're taller than him but you say nothing and just burrow a little closer to his side.

He smells like bitter chemicals and stale air and he feels warm but broken against you but he's still John and you can only hope that he feels just a little bit better with you here. You're not a lot but you're not a stranger.

The two of you spend what feels like hours out there in the cold (58 minutes and 40 seconds) just sitting slotted together to conserve warmth like the two careless manchildren that you are. You're not too sure about John but you know you'll be extremely sick before New Year's. You don't care.

A cold, fairly strong gust of wind blows by, you shiver through it but John just sits there and welcomes it like an old friend.

Time continues to tick endlessly on, and the wind continues to blow by, life continues to be flawed and the two of you sit there, wrapped around each other and try to keep living through it.

 

 

 


End file.
